hello to all!
after 7 years of pulsar ownership hiding in the shadows i thought i'd best get around to writing a member's ride thread, it's an epic tale of heart ache and pain...
i'm from manchester and before pulsar ownership my first car was a 45bhp fiat uno - was my mums - after 12 years in the family it started falling apart, rusting and things breaking - it was screwed - it was actually dark red so me and a mate painted it white and grey - looks ok in photos - it didn't in real life - was about 5 shades of white...
we scrapped it and i bought a red sunny N13 1.4LS 82bhp beast...
i moved to guildford for work and went to santa pod for the first time ever with friends in about 2005 - "WOW those newer style nissan sunnys with a grille in the bonnet are fast" i thought - did a bit of research to find out about the Sunny/Pulsar GTIR - "i'll get one of them one day" i said!
one year later...
vroom vroom - my first year pulsar car insurance was £1300 in guildford, was quoted £2800 in manchester!!!
it had different wheels when i got it - my first experience of a 4 wheel drive wheel spin soon destroyed the original wheels - pedal to the metal coming out of a round about in heavy rain - I spun round 270 degrees, shooting across the road sideways, missing on coming traffic, slamming the central reservation curb, pretty much left the ground with all 4 wheels and twatted a plastic barrier - new wheels required plus a wing.
all fixed and back on the road - 6 months later the turbo bit the dust on the M25 near heathrow - pedal to metal 4th gear outside lane - POP BOOM! - massive smoke screen out the exhaust pipe - lucky i didn't cause a major pile up - i couldn't see any traffic in my rear view mirrors - i mean huge smoke screen the kind james bond would be proud of!
i pulled over, i popped the bonnet to find burning hot oil had even sprayed out of the dump valve all over the place - i phoned a friend - he said your turbo has blown oil seals - i drove it home very slowly - no boost - bad idea...
i sent the turbo away to be refurbed at turbo developments in chiswick, got 360 thurst bearing etc basic upgrade (pleased to say ~40,000+ miles later turbo still going strong today) - after 4 weeks on axle stands on my driveway with a new set of halford tools i managed to fit a new turbo - i was well chuffed! - before that all i'd ever done was general servicing and brake pads/disks etc. (i did actually attempt a headgasket fix on the uno once, but that went badly wrong so a garage had to fix it...)
luckily i still had the red sunny, 'The support vehicle' as i used to call it so 4 weeks on axle stands was ok - i can do a turbo swap in a day now = too much practice
6 months later driving up to manchester, was a nice day and i was flying up M40 just before birmingham - BOOM CHUG CHUG BOOM! - the engine bit the dust - bottom end failure - back to the support vehicle...
by this time i was following threads on the internet from the likes of lewi roberts, jason gant etc. also the 5th gear episode with daniel fennel and vicky butler was good inspiration at the time to take the car to DP motorsport for a new engine - so off i went to DP motorsport armed with a bank loan thinking "GO BIG OR GO HOME!"
87mm bored out block with hks pistons - hks headgasket - oil pump - water pump - general gaskets etc - car back on the road and me more paranoid than a meth addict... (i'm please to say ~40,000 miles later the engine still going strong, shame about everything else attached to it.)
3 months later i decided to fit some new sensors and center dials, oil temp/pressure/water temp/boost gauge - then i went out to get fish and chips and test the dials - bad plan i should of stayed at home...
i was in the outside lane of dual carriageway doing the speed limit and out of a 'giveway' sideroad this girl drove out in front of me doing no more than 10mph, stright in to my outside lane not looking, the left lane was clear and SLAM BANG CRASH FOOKING HELL!!!
got a VW passat courtesy car...
was ok having a break from crazy pulsar troubles in the comfy passat whilst the crazy bitch denied all charges - why drive into the patch of someone at 10mph on a dual carriage way and then deny all blame? - no-one could have stopped - she's lucky she didn't make it another 1m forward because i would of slammed straight into her door and she would have gone to hospital!
4 months of brand new passat driving and the gearbox failed - am i jinxed? it just decided to stop going in gear when the engine was running, so i engine off i changed gear and drove around one day in only 2nd gear - it wasn't mine so bouncing off the rev limiter on a dual carriage way coming home from work was quite funny, and i was waiting for a replacement.
they gave me a brand new rav4... amazing!
this was a great car - hell of a good rev range for a diesel turbo, it went up to 6500rpm pretty strongly - had this for 1 month before insurance case was finalised...
can't believe insurance case lasted so long!?!? it wasn't my fault and everytime mine and her insurance company wrote to her she said no no no thats not fair - she even phoned me one night to have a cry about how she was going to lose her car because she was only third party, and it wasn't fair that i was fully comp and had all these great courtesy cars!?!? i very politely told her to FOOK OFF!!! can you believe the total cost to insurance for my courtesy car was £8,000 over 5 months!!! WTF - could buy 2 good pulsars for that!
i got a cheque through the post and bought the crashed car back off insurance to keep my new turbo and engine... they delivered it on a flat bed truck and guess what! the drivers side was caved in - WTF! i went mad - only the passenger side was crashed, the drivers side was fine when it left me!!! the car had been passed around the country getting assessed all over the place - all the assessors apart from one had photos - how convenient - the only one who did not take any photos was the only one who could not prove they hadn't trashed the drivers side of my car! my insurance company ended up giving me £500 as a gesture of good will, it was only a bent door so i was quite happy to be honest - just pissed off out of principal!
armed with insurance money and a bent car i found that mr lewi roberts was selling his rolling shell so that he could build another monster car - he sold it to me for £700 which was a bargain as it still had the tein coil overs on it - off to DP motorsports again and got them to build me the best of two cars...
this shell was cosmetically poor but structurally solid unlike the crashed one which before the crash was cosmetically shiney amazing but underneath it was rotten...
back on the road again thinking i need my head checking - i'm properly commited now... i had my new turbo engine etc from crashed car in a different shell, so the way i saw it was other than losing my marbles, money wise i had done ok...
6 months later i'm no longer paranoid i was thinking great i'll get rid of the red sunny as it had just failed MOT on rotten rear suspension bits plus other things - i weighed it in scrap during steel boom and got £160.
bad idea - three weeks later i was flat out in second, then third, up slip road on to the A3, into 4th - CRUNCH CLATTER WHACK CRUNCH!!! that's 4th gear shreadded then - BOLLOX, no support vehicle
on axle stands for 4 weeks on my driveway and i changed my own gearbox - legend! got a replacement box off Dan the man and set to work with some ideas found on the forums... when finished i wrote the gearbox 'how-to' on the modifiers forum:
http://www.nissangtir.co.uk/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=29352
I celebrated my gearbox success by going to santapod and running 14.02sec 1/4 mile at USC... good way to remove what was yet more paranoia
i fooked up my left knee hiking at mount snowdon and couldn't drive - once i found out the estimated recovery time i bought a scooter...
bought a group buy resin car kit...
i have prepared all the pieces but not glued or painted any - my real car needs more work than the model!
at some point i changed the crazy twin exit massive silencers exhaust i had, which looked like i'd ran over a dr who cyberman, with a typical mongoose system - WOW that was loud!!!
getting adventurous now i fitted my own front mount intercooler - usual ebay job for a few hundred quid, bodged a nice radox bottle washer sprayer...
gear linkage was getting sloppy and it jumped out of 1st now and again over big bumps - i replaced the rubber bushings and bodged the bit under the gearstick with some shelving bracket, works a treat...
having it still jump out of 1st now and again i thought maybe the engine mounts were too flexible - so i powerflex bushed the whole front end - and made my own buffer mounts by sticking the original ones in half a bottle, filled it up with liquid polyurethane and when it set cut it up and shazzam!
works a treat... then i made the stupid mistake of buying the wrong fooking wishbone bushes, the stupid N13/N14 crossover...
Just when i thought things are going well - BOOM CRASH BANG WALLOP!
driving home from work a lady crashed in to me on a roundabout! luckily she instantly claimed responsibility, phoned her insurance company, not my fault and four weeks later i had a cheque through the post - i briefly had a VW Jetta 2.0TDI courtesy car for one week whilst my car was being assessed, this thing was cool, brand new and fast... i'm clearly a 'crash chick magnet' - shame i don't pull the birds as easy!
bad news, my car was written off but then good news, i bought it back off the insurance company, used a crow bar on the body work and shazzam!
back on the road...
bought willwood 4 pots and some rays TE37 lightweight wheels - all second hand but good price and wow those wheels are really light and the brakes are really good - bought quality refurbish rear calipers too...
3 months later and this jumping out of 1st gear has got crazy - so i'm pulling away in second everywhere because of the crunching trying to hold it in - then reverse turned in to a big shuddering mess - new gearbox time!
i found one from a breaking car on ebay and followed my 'how-to' and was back on the road within two weeks.
driving home from manchester one night my turbo elbow + down pipe fell off - it sounded like a spitfire and i pulled over - luckily it couldn't fall any further than the cross beam thing below the radiator so i thought screw it "i can put up with the noise, it will be fine!"
DISASTER! the red hot gases bursting out of the side of my turbo as a flew down the M40 melted my alternator, engine mount, radiator tank plus a few other things - needless to say i broke down
the melted yellow rubber fell on the pulleys and belts and was flicked around all over the place!
because the bolts had sheard off half were still stuck in the cast iron exhaust section of the turbo - i could not drill them out so i thought genius idea - drill and tap 6mm thread into the 8/10mm bolts - then cross wire them so they do not undo...
i still maintain that it was a genius idea - but needless to say it fooked up and snapped off again - probably something to do with buying the bolts from B&Q and totally disregarding the fact that they need to withstand 600 degrees... i did not drive home this time it fell off... turbo off the car and sent it to turbo developments in chiswick where it was previously rebuilt to get a new exhaust housing.
oh dear bad rust... suspension turret and sills...
look how much i bashed out of one sill - it sounded like it was full of money when i was bashing it with a rubber hammer...
i've grinded it back, fiber glassed it all and filled it all with dynax - i only want about one more year out of it then new shell.
i removed the rear interior because all the panels rattle - the roof lining rattle is next, that is loud at idle -
bought bucket seats and harnesses and painted inside black as you can see above.
fitted a rear strut brace, unplugged ABS because it had been freaking out and went out for a spin - literally!
OOPS - back end was pretty light and as i was hammering it down a country lane i forgot i'd pulled the fuse on ABS - stood on my brakes and holy shit did i leave the road!
spun round went up an embankment thought it was going to roll - managed to save it - slammed back down on to tarmac and as you can see from the picture got a piece of tree stuck in my wheel and fooked up the front end.
no-one would fix my wheel - they all said it's likely to split so we're not willing to even try - so i got a selection of hammers and started whacking - took me 5 hours of whacking - i had mega blisters all over my hands - i am now as good with my left as i am with my right hand!
no one will ever know - lol - not bad i think, saved a £500 wheel from the scrap heap. i'm still amazed that the tyre didn't pop or lose air when i crashed!?!?
went to cranleigh classic car show - we get in for free now if the car is over 20 years old...
a friend bought me a GTIR cake for my 30th birthday last year...
powerflex bushed the whole rear end subframe etc - not much to see on the photo - just showing off how high i can get the car on my drive way now with my ramps and new trolley jack
sick of how loud the mongoose was i fitted (bodged) i new exhaust silencer - not a bad fit - just cut the mongoose pipe above the subframe, turned it 180 degrees, put the silencer on that, put on end pipe, all held together with various clamps and hangers... it'll probably fall off...
it is a lot quieter than before - i wrote about my exhaust noise testing here:
http://www.gtiroc.com/forums/showthread.php?65586-Exhaust-Noise&highlight=
this completes my story so far - ooh, forgot i've not mentioned the hundreds of small parts along the way, cv joints, drive shafts, helicoil manifold studs, knock sensor, oil cooler, boost controller, steering arms, track rod ends, ball joints, the list is huge...
next mission 2014/2015, nice rolling clean shell rebuild with all my parts, or push it off a cliff, buy a yaris and have done with it, watch this space!?!?
thanks for reading and good night!
Adam
after 7 years of pulsar ownership hiding in the shadows i thought i'd best get around to writing a member's ride thread, it's an epic tale of heart ache and pain...
i'm from manchester and before pulsar ownership my first car was a 45bhp fiat uno - was my mums - after 12 years in the family it started falling apart, rusting and things breaking - it was screwed - it was actually dark red so me and a mate painted it white and grey - looks ok in photos - it didn't in real life - was about 5 shades of white...
we scrapped it and i bought a red sunny N13 1.4LS 82bhp beast...
i moved to guildford for work and went to santa pod for the first time ever with friends in about 2005 - "WOW those newer style nissan sunnys with a grille in the bonnet are fast" i thought - did a bit of research to find out about the Sunny/Pulsar GTIR - "i'll get one of them one day" i said!
one year later...
vroom vroom - my first year pulsar car insurance was £1300 in guildford, was quoted £2800 in manchester!!!
it had different wheels when i got it - my first experience of a 4 wheel drive wheel spin soon destroyed the original wheels - pedal to the metal coming out of a round about in heavy rain - I spun round 270 degrees, shooting across the road sideways, missing on coming traffic, slamming the central reservation curb, pretty much left the ground with all 4 wheels and twatted a plastic barrier - new wheels required plus a wing.
all fixed and back on the road - 6 months later the turbo bit the dust on the M25 near heathrow - pedal to metal 4th gear outside lane - POP BOOM! - massive smoke screen out the exhaust pipe - lucky i didn't cause a major pile up - i couldn't see any traffic in my rear view mirrors - i mean huge smoke screen the kind james bond would be proud of!
i pulled over, i popped the bonnet to find burning hot oil had even sprayed out of the dump valve all over the place - i phoned a friend - he said your turbo has blown oil seals - i drove it home very slowly - no boost - bad idea...
i sent the turbo away to be refurbed at turbo developments in chiswick, got 360 thurst bearing etc basic upgrade (pleased to say ~40,000+ miles later turbo still going strong today) - after 4 weeks on axle stands on my driveway with a new set of halford tools i managed to fit a new turbo - i was well chuffed! - before that all i'd ever done was general servicing and brake pads/disks etc. (i did actually attempt a headgasket fix on the uno once, but that went badly wrong so a garage had to fix it...)
luckily i still had the red sunny, 'The support vehicle' as i used to call it so 4 weeks on axle stands was ok - i can do a turbo swap in a day now = too much practice
6 months later driving up to manchester, was a nice day and i was flying up M40 just before birmingham - BOOM CHUG CHUG BOOM! - the engine bit the dust - bottom end failure - back to the support vehicle...
by this time i was following threads on the internet from the likes of lewi roberts, jason gant etc. also the 5th gear episode with daniel fennel and vicky butler was good inspiration at the time to take the car to DP motorsport for a new engine - so off i went to DP motorsport armed with a bank loan thinking "GO BIG OR GO HOME!"
87mm bored out block with hks pistons - hks headgasket - oil pump - water pump - general gaskets etc - car back on the road and me more paranoid than a meth addict... (i'm please to say ~40,000 miles later the engine still going strong, shame about everything else attached to it.)
3 months later i decided to fit some new sensors and center dials, oil temp/pressure/water temp/boost gauge - then i went out to get fish and chips and test the dials - bad plan i should of stayed at home...
i was in the outside lane of dual carriageway doing the speed limit and out of a 'giveway' sideroad this girl drove out in front of me doing no more than 10mph, stright in to my outside lane not looking, the left lane was clear and SLAM BANG CRASH FOOKING HELL!!!
got a VW passat courtesy car...
was ok having a break from crazy pulsar troubles in the comfy passat whilst the crazy bitch denied all charges - why drive into the patch of someone at 10mph on a dual carriage way and then deny all blame? - no-one could have stopped - she's lucky she didn't make it another 1m forward because i would of slammed straight into her door and she would have gone to hospital!
4 months of brand new passat driving and the gearbox failed - am i jinxed? it just decided to stop going in gear when the engine was running, so i engine off i changed gear and drove around one day in only 2nd gear - it wasn't mine so bouncing off the rev limiter on a dual carriage way coming home from work was quite funny, and i was waiting for a replacement.
they gave me a brand new rav4... amazing!
this was a great car - hell of a good rev range for a diesel turbo, it went up to 6500rpm pretty strongly - had this for 1 month before insurance case was finalised...
can't believe insurance case lasted so long!?!? it wasn't my fault and everytime mine and her insurance company wrote to her she said no no no thats not fair - she even phoned me one night to have a cry about how she was going to lose her car because she was only third party, and it wasn't fair that i was fully comp and had all these great courtesy cars!?!? i very politely told her to FOOK OFF!!! can you believe the total cost to insurance for my courtesy car was £8,000 over 5 months!!! WTF - could buy 2 good pulsars for that!
i got a cheque through the post and bought the crashed car back off insurance to keep my new turbo and engine... they delivered it on a flat bed truck and guess what! the drivers side was caved in - WTF! i went mad - only the passenger side was crashed, the drivers side was fine when it left me!!! the car had been passed around the country getting assessed all over the place - all the assessors apart from one had photos - how convenient - the only one who did not take any photos was the only one who could not prove they hadn't trashed the drivers side of my car! my insurance company ended up giving me £500 as a gesture of good will, it was only a bent door so i was quite happy to be honest - just pissed off out of principal!
armed with insurance money and a bent car i found that mr lewi roberts was selling his rolling shell so that he could build another monster car - he sold it to me for £700 which was a bargain as it still had the tein coil overs on it - off to DP motorsports again and got them to build me the best of two cars...
this shell was cosmetically poor but structurally solid unlike the crashed one which before the crash was cosmetically shiney amazing but underneath it was rotten...
back on the road again thinking i need my head checking - i'm properly commited now... i had my new turbo engine etc from crashed car in a different shell, so the way i saw it was other than losing my marbles, money wise i had done ok...
6 months later i'm no longer paranoid i was thinking great i'll get rid of the red sunny as it had just failed MOT on rotten rear suspension bits plus other things - i weighed it in scrap during steel boom and got £160.
bad idea - three weeks later i was flat out in second, then third, up slip road on to the A3, into 4th - CRUNCH CLATTER WHACK CRUNCH!!! that's 4th gear shreadded then - BOLLOX, no support vehicle
on axle stands for 4 weeks on my driveway and i changed my own gearbox - legend! got a replacement box off Dan the man and set to work with some ideas found on the forums... when finished i wrote the gearbox 'how-to' on the modifiers forum:
http://www.nissangtir.co.uk/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=29352
I celebrated my gearbox success by going to santapod and running 14.02sec 1/4 mile at USC... good way to remove what was yet more paranoia
i fooked up my left knee hiking at mount snowdon and couldn't drive - once i found out the estimated recovery time i bought a scooter...
bought a group buy resin car kit...
i have prepared all the pieces but not glued or painted any - my real car needs more work than the model!
at some point i changed the crazy twin exit massive silencers exhaust i had, which looked like i'd ran over a dr who cyberman, with a typical mongoose system - WOW that was loud!!!
getting adventurous now i fitted my own front mount intercooler - usual ebay job for a few hundred quid, bodged a nice radox bottle washer sprayer...
gear linkage was getting sloppy and it jumped out of 1st now and again over big bumps - i replaced the rubber bushings and bodged the bit under the gearstick with some shelving bracket, works a treat...
having it still jump out of 1st now and again i thought maybe the engine mounts were too flexible - so i powerflex bushed the whole front end - and made my own buffer mounts by sticking the original ones in half a bottle, filled it up with liquid polyurethane and when it set cut it up and shazzam!
works a treat... then i made the stupid mistake of buying the wrong fooking wishbone bushes, the stupid N13/N14 crossover...
Just when i thought things are going well - BOOM CRASH BANG WALLOP!
driving home from work a lady crashed in to me on a roundabout! luckily she instantly claimed responsibility, phoned her insurance company, not my fault and four weeks later i had a cheque through the post - i briefly had a VW Jetta 2.0TDI courtesy car for one week whilst my car was being assessed, this thing was cool, brand new and fast... i'm clearly a 'crash chick magnet' - shame i don't pull the birds as easy!
bad news, my car was written off but then good news, i bought it back off the insurance company, used a crow bar on the body work and shazzam!
back on the road...
bought willwood 4 pots and some rays TE37 lightweight wheels - all second hand but good price and wow those wheels are really light and the brakes are really good - bought quality refurbish rear calipers too...
3 months later and this jumping out of 1st gear has got crazy - so i'm pulling away in second everywhere because of the crunching trying to hold it in - then reverse turned in to a big shuddering mess - new gearbox time!
i found one from a breaking car on ebay and followed my 'how-to' and was back on the road within two weeks.
driving home from manchester one night my turbo elbow + down pipe fell off - it sounded like a spitfire and i pulled over - luckily it couldn't fall any further than the cross beam thing below the radiator so i thought screw it "i can put up with the noise, it will be fine!"
DISASTER! the red hot gases bursting out of the side of my turbo as a flew down the M40 melted my alternator, engine mount, radiator tank plus a few other things - needless to say i broke down
the melted yellow rubber fell on the pulleys and belts and was flicked around all over the place!
because the bolts had sheard off half were still stuck in the cast iron exhaust section of the turbo - i could not drill them out so i thought genius idea - drill and tap 6mm thread into the 8/10mm bolts - then cross wire them so they do not undo...
i still maintain that it was a genius idea - but needless to say it fooked up and snapped off again - probably something to do with buying the bolts from B&Q and totally disregarding the fact that they need to withstand 600 degrees... i did not drive home this time it fell off... turbo off the car and sent it to turbo developments in chiswick where it was previously rebuilt to get a new exhaust housing.
oh dear bad rust... suspension turret and sills...
look how much i bashed out of one sill - it sounded like it was full of money when i was bashing it with a rubber hammer...
i've grinded it back, fiber glassed it all and filled it all with dynax - i only want about one more year out of it then new shell.
i removed the rear interior because all the panels rattle - the roof lining rattle is next, that is loud at idle -
bought bucket seats and harnesses and painted inside black as you can see above.
fitted a rear strut brace, unplugged ABS because it had been freaking out and went out for a spin - literally!
OOPS - back end was pretty light and as i was hammering it down a country lane i forgot i'd pulled the fuse on ABS - stood on my brakes and holy shit did i leave the road!
spun round went up an embankment thought it was going to roll - managed to save it - slammed back down on to tarmac and as you can see from the picture got a piece of tree stuck in my wheel and fooked up the front end.
no-one would fix my wheel - they all said it's likely to split so we're not willing to even try - so i got a selection of hammers and started whacking - took me 5 hours of whacking - i had mega blisters all over my hands - i am now as good with my left as i am with my right hand!
no one will ever know - lol - not bad i think, saved a £500 wheel from the scrap heap. i'm still amazed that the tyre didn't pop or lose air when i crashed!?!?
went to cranleigh classic car show - we get in for free now if the car is over 20 years old...
a friend bought me a GTIR cake for my 30th birthday last year...
powerflex bushed the whole rear end subframe etc - not much to see on the photo - just showing off how high i can get the car on my drive way now with my ramps and new trolley jack
sick of how loud the mongoose was i fitted (bodged) i new exhaust silencer - not a bad fit - just cut the mongoose pipe above the subframe, turned it 180 degrees, put the silencer on that, put on end pipe, all held together with various clamps and hangers... it'll probably fall off...
it is a lot quieter than before - i wrote about my exhaust noise testing here:
http://www.gtiroc.com/forums/showthread.php?65586-Exhaust-Noise&highlight=
this completes my story so far - ooh, forgot i've not mentioned the hundreds of small parts along the way, cv joints, drive shafts, helicoil manifold studs, knock sensor, oil cooler, boost controller, steering arms, track rod ends, ball joints, the list is huge...
next mission 2014/2015, nice rolling clean shell rebuild with all my parts, or push it off a cliff, buy a yaris and have done with it, watch this space!?!?
thanks for reading and good night!
Adam
Last edited by mreguest on 6th June 2013, 2:09 am; edited 1 time in total